As you note, regular poker and poker with an extra cut mid-deal are completely isomorphic. In a professional game you would obviously care, because the formality of the shuffle and deal are part of a tradition to instill trust that the deck isn’t rigged. For a casual game, where it is assumed no one is cheating, then, unless you’re a stickler for tradition, who cares? Your friends are wrong. We have two different pointers pointing to the same thing, and they are complaining because the pointers aren’t the same, even though all that matters is what those pointers point to. It would be like complaining if you tried to change the name of Poker to Wallaboo mid-deal.
There are rules for the game that are perceived as fair.
If one participant goes changing the rules in the middle of the game this 1) makes rule changing acceptable in the game, 2) forces other players to analyze the current (and future changes) to the game to ensure they are fair.
Cutting the deck probably doesn’t affect the probability distribution (unless you shuffled the deck in a “funny” way). Allowing it makes a case for allowing the next changes in the rules too. Thus you can end up analyzing a new game rather than having fun playing poker.
For a casual game, where it is assumed no one is cheating, then, unless you’re a stickler for tradition, who cares? Your friends are wrong.
Sure, but the “wrong” in this case couldn’t be shown to my friends. They perfectly understood probability. The problem wasn’t in the math. So where were they wrong?
Another way of saying this:
The territory said one thing
Their map said another thing
Their map understood probability
Where did their map go wrong?
The answer has nothing to do with me cheating and has nothing to do with misunderstanding probability. There is some other problem here and I don’t know what it is.
As you note, regular poker and poker with an extra cut mid-deal are completely isomorphic. In a professional game you would obviously care, because the formality of the shuffle and deal are part of a tradition to instill trust that the deck isn’t rigged. For a casual game, where it is assumed no one is cheating, then, unless you’re a stickler for tradition, who cares? Your friends are wrong. We have two different pointers pointing to the same thing, and they are complaining because the pointers aren’t the same, even though all that matters is what those pointers point to. It would be like complaining if you tried to change the name of Poker to Wallaboo mid-deal.
There are rules for the game that are perceived as fair.
If one participant goes changing the rules in the middle of the game this 1) makes rule changing acceptable in the game, 2) forces other players to analyze the current (and future changes) to the game to ensure they are fair.
Cutting the deck probably doesn’t affect the probability distribution (unless you shuffled the deck in a “funny” way). Allowing it makes a case for allowing the next changes in the rules too. Thus you can end up analyzing a new game rather than having fun playing poker.
Sure, but the “wrong” in this case couldn’t be shown to my friends. They perfectly understood probability. The problem wasn’t in the math. So where were they wrong?
Another way of saying this:
The territory said one thing
Their map said another thing
Their map understood probability
Where did their map go wrong?
The answer has nothing to do with me cheating and has nothing to do with misunderstanding probability. There is some other problem here and I don’t know what it is.